Ahhhh…so the real reason for allowing the bees comes out…..to make buck . The number of ordinances to raise $$ in my little city is ridiculous. Sometimes I think I’ll get charged just to walk across the street to watch the feral hive living 15 feet up in a City planted tree! Wonder whom they bill for the feral hives? LOL, probably give you a tax lien if they spot it.

While I despise all these little local laws to raise a buck, it is nice to see bees actually getting the stamp of legality within city limits. I primarily live outside the city limits where the water bill is still less than the price of gold.

If there isn’t an ordinance about bees within a City, then I have to assume it is legal to keep bees within said City limits. I have read the ordinances for the small cities around me and have never run into a clause about bees yet. Chicken yes, bees no! LOL, the Chicken laws were pretty hilarious; they were pages long! My guess is until somebody complains there is a problem the Cities don’t think far enough ahead to make preventative ordinances. Of course if they think they can raise more revenue on something, they’ll codify that in a heartbeat.

No ordinances in my little city but I don’t keep bees within the City limits unless it is housing a swarm temporarily. I did keep a little swarm housed up at the Church for the better part of the summer and nobody seemed to be any the wiser! They aren’t the most observant crew around here ;)

BluebeeBee's are considered live stock just like cow's. In the city ordinances they dont name all the stock that can not be kept in town. They dont name "BEE'S" just like they dont name cow's and sheep and goats and chickens and on and on and on. The simple say no live stock. TerryI'm working on the garden hive idea.

You may be partially correct in your statements, but in my county they specifically name livestock by name and like I said there are 2 pages of code just on chickens within the city limits of one town. You have to have certain sizes of acreage for certain animals in my county; so they do specify specific animals. You can't keep cows within the city limits of the towns around me. Townships YES, City Limits NO.

OK, I think they did call the chickens “fowl” to be more generic. I’ll grant you that one.

There’s a guy near me that has a farm of white tailed deer! He’s on about 40 acres of land and has fences that are 6 or 7 foot tall. Probably a good reason to put that “domesticated” clause in the ordinances. As far as I know, you can’t keep deer in the State of Michigan without a special permit from the State. It must have been a nightmare to get the State, the County, and the township to approve the deer farm. The real question I’ve always had is: WHY! Why on earth would you want to raise deer when there are millions and millions of the things running wild across lower Michigan.

Down in Ann Arbor, they used to keep Buffalo on the Domino Farms (ie Pizza) facility. Not aware of any Buffalo in my county though. There are some Alpaca farms in Michigan, I don't know if they're classified as domesticated or not.

There’s a guy near me that has a farm of white tailed deer! He’s on about 40 acres of land and has fences that are 6 or 7 foot tall. Probably a good reason to put that “domesticated” clause in the ordinances. As far as I know, you can’t keep deer in the State of Michigan without a special permit from the State. It must have been a nightmare to get the State, the County, and the township to approve the deer farm. The real question I’ve always had is: WHY! Why on earth would you want to raise deer when there are millions and millions of the things running wild across lower Michigan.

Down in Ann Arbor, they used to keep Buffalo on the Domino Farms (ie Pizza) facility. Not aware of any Buffalo in my county though. There are some Alpaca farms in Michigan, I don't know if they're classified as domesticated or not.

In Michigan you CANNOT take animals out of the wild to raise as pets. If you want to have a pet that is considered wildlife it has to be purchased from a lic. dealer. You also need a lic. from the DNR to have it. I know this because I have been Lic. That said deer raised in a pen have NEVER been wild They are live stock

Thanks for the info Danno. Like I said, I didn’t know the laws about keeping deer. Might I inquire what you do with captive deer? My neighbor probably has 40 or 50 of them in his big fenced in area. Must have cost a small fortune just for the fence. I can’t imagine the deer paying for that much expense, but then again, this is something I know nothing about.

Thanks for the info Danno. Like I said, I didn’t know the laws about keeping deer. Might I inquire what you do with captive deer? My neighbor probably has 40 or 50 of them in his big fenced in area. Must have cost a small fortune just for the fence. I can’t imagine the deer paying for that much expense, but then again, this is something I know nothing about.

I didn't have deer. When my boys were young they had a pet skunk deglanded of coarse. Same Lic different animal. With bovine TB here and one case of chronic wasting disease owning deer has become very complicated. Way more then small mammals. Man this got waaaaaaay off track.

Yep, got way off topic, but it was interesting. Danno, thanks for shedding some light on keeping wildlife in Michigan. I learned something.

Now to play devil’s advocate and tie this back into bees: If the bees aren’t domesticated aren’t they also wildlife? Aren’t the swarms I catch from trees wildlife? If some city council was to really parse the law up (which they love to do), they might get away with classifying bees as “wildlife” and make it darn near impossible to keep bees.

This is one of those things where the State Government (now completely in Republican control) should step in and lay down the law, or write a new one, to prevent the local City Councils from playing God. Come on Republicans, show me you can do the right thing! :)